Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece

We often think of classical Greek society as a model of rationality and order. Yet as Walter Burkert demonstrates in these influential essays on the history of Greek religion, there were archaic, savage forces surging beneath the outwardly calm face of classical Greece, whose potentially violent and destructive energies, Burkert argues, were harnessed to constructive ends through the interlinked uses of myth and ritual.

For example, in a much-cited essay on the Athenian religious festival of the Arrephoria, Burkert uncovers deep connections between this strange nocturnal ritual, in which two virgin girls carried sacred offerings into a cave and later returned with something given to them there, and tribal puberty initiations by linking the festival with the myth of the daughters of Kekrops. Other chapters explore the origins of tragedy in blood sacrifice; the role of myth in the ritual of the new fire on Lemnos; the ties between violence, the Athenian courts, and the annual purification of the divine image; and how failed political propaganda entered the realm of myth at the time of the Persian Wars.

ForewordGlenn W. Most1. Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual2. The Legend of Kekrops's Daughters and the Arrhephoria: From Initiation Ritual to Panathenaic Festival3. Jason, Hypsipyle, and New Fire at Lemnos: A Study in Myth and Ritual4. Buzyges and Palladion: Violence and the Courts in Ancient Greek Ritual5. Demaratos, Astrabakos, and Herakles: Kingship, Myth, and Politics at the Time of the Persian Wars

Review Quotes

Pier Giorgio Solinas | Journal of Religion

“The English-speaking world is now being invited, forty years after the original date of publication . . . to read or reread some of the seminal insights that Walter Burkert introduced to the austere tribunal of classical philology. These insights were the basis for an anthropological . . . hermeneutics that advanced an exemplary and resolutely bold thesis.”

Eva Stehle | The Historian

“The author of this study is the foremost living interpreter of Greek religious ritual, whose theoretical influence extends well beyond the world of classical studies. . . . It is very good to have these essays, three of them oft-cited classics, published together.”

Birger A. Pearson | Religion

“There can be no question that Walter Burkert is the preeminent historian of Greek religion of our time. In this book are five of his early essays . . . all of them dealing with aspects of the relationships between sacrificial ritual and myth in ancient Greece, in which brilliant new light is cast on obscure and enigmatic examples.”

Harold Tarrant | European Legacy

“Throughout the collection Burkert displays mastery of his wide-ranging materials, considerable controlled insight, and the ability to see into the darker and more violent side of myth and ritual that the Greeks were increasingly reluctant to highlight.”

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